The Way We Were
by Pepperminty
Summary: Grissom and Sara's temper's flare, but the truth may not be what they were looking for.
1. Default Chapter

The Way We Were

**Summary-** Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they thought.

**Rating- **PG-13 for some language

**Disclaimer-** Yeah, I don't own them, nor anything related to them.

**Pairing- **Grissom and Sara

**Spoilers:** Up to and including Nesting Dolls everything is fair game.

**Announcement:** Second chapter only needs to be typed, so should be up either today or tomorrow.

**Chapter 1**

'We're one, but we're not the same. Well we hurt each other and we do it again. You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl, and I can't be holding on, to what you've got when all you got is hurt. One love, one blood. One life you've got to do what you should, one life with each other, sisters, brothers, one life but we're not the same we get to carry each other. One'- U2 One

She pushed him, forcefully. "Don't you _dare _say that." He stumbled backward, attempting to maintain his balance against her barrage of words had caught him off guard

"No one loves me okay, nobody ever has. You don't love me. Don't you dare come in here and presume by telling me that you love me, that everything is going to be okay. Its never okay, nothing is ever okay, and the sooner you stop trying to fix me the better okay Grissom? You can stop wasting your time. You can't fix me. I'm not one of your fucking experiments damnit." He grabbed her hands,

"But..."

"But what Grissom? What, you think you know me now?" she squirmed out of his grip, "You think you know what makes me tick now? You think you have the right to make presumptions about me, because I momentarily let you into my life. Grissom, come on, tell me then. You know everything, why can't I sleep at night still? You think because you push me into telling you about my family that that gives you a one way ticket into my life? Don't count on it Grissom. You made the decision that you didn't want anything to do with my life a long time ago"

"Sara, I want to deal with this" her eyes gleamed with rage

"You want to deal with this?" she asked incredulously "We, or more specifically, you, already dealt with this. Several times. There's nothing left to deal with. You had 5 years, Grissom, 5 years, and you said nothing. Even you can't be that clueless. It was your decision, and you made it. So don't come back to me and try and go back on it. Jesus Grissom, why now? I pursued you, I waited for you. Until you were ready, I waited." She glared into his eyes, those blue eyes that she longed to look at her the way she remembered "I waited, for so long, that I… forgot what I was waiting for. And then, you would look at me, in a way, which I can't even explain. I love the way you looked at me. And the way, you would talk about me, to other people, the way that you would say my name" she looked anywhere but in his eyes, lost in the memories.

"Why Grissom, why couldn't you talk to me about us? Did I ask too much? God Grissom, you gave me nothing, and now, that's all that I have left. I have nothing anymore." Her shoulders slumped, defeated. She sighed exhaustedly,

"God Grissom, just go okay? I'm…I'm sorry…um…you're probably uncomfortable, so" she moved swiftly toward the door, unwilling to let him respond. He shuffled toward her, placing his hand on her arm.

"God, don't Grissom, please" she pulled her arm away, almost painfully.

"Is this the way it's going to be now" he asked softly

"When was it ever different Gil?"

"Look at me Sara, please"

"No"

"Why?"

"Because if I do, I don't trust myself to let you walk out the door while I have to watch you leave here again. I don't trust myself to not ask you to stay" The moment lingered, as if both of them wanted to say something, but in each other's presence, the words remained elusive, and unspoken.

She looked out the peephole at his retreating figure sighing softly 'Stay with me Grissom. Stay with me forever and a day'

He had the answers to her questions, which he had originally gone there to answer. But in her presence the words he needed always seemed to fall away, and all he could resort to was wishing that she would let him hold her. Try to let her feel what he wanted to say. '_You have a quote for every occasion Gil, but when she pours her heart out to you, and wants answers, you can't even mumble a yes or a no'._

She slid her hand down the door, releasing the cool metal from her hand. She could feel the tears beginning to well, that sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she had had to experience so many times before, watching yet another person walk from her life. She padded through her lounge room contemplating turning on her scanner, to ease her pain, reminding her that at the least, with everything, she was still healthy and alive, listening to other people's pain, to try and soothe hers. But that would mean going into work, and she didn't want to open up that can of worms just yet. An attempt at sleep, she thought, would probably be her best course of action. Her head hit the pillow, and again, as almost every other night, the dreams began.

'See the stone set in your eyes see the thorn twist in your side, I'll wait for you. Slight of hand and twist of fate, on a bed of nails she makes me wait. And I'll wait without you. With or without you. You give it all but I want more, and I'm waiting for you. With our without you. I can't live with or without you. And you give yourself away, and you give yourself away, and you give, and you give, and you give yourself away.'

U2- With Or Without You


	2. Chapter 2

_**The Way We Were**_

**Summary:** Grissom and Sara's tempers flare, but the truth may hurt more than they thought.

**Rating: **PG-13 for some language

**Disclaimer:** Yeah, I don't own them, nor anything related to them.

**Pairing: **Grissom and Sara

**Spoilers:** Up to and including Nesting Dolls everything is fair game. Particular references in this chapter to Playing With Fire, Primum Non Nocere, and Burden of Proof.

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who's read and left reviews, they really help to keep writing, so thankyou so much! Chapter 3 will take a little longer, about 3 days before it will be up.

**Chapter 2**

"Nobody said it was easy, it's such a shame for us to part, nobody said it was easy no one ever said it would be this hard. Oh take me back to the start."- Coldplay- The Scientist

Work remained monotonous. His work held no joy. His team was gone, and any remnants of his team seem to be disappearing before his eyes. Sara began to fade into the background it seemed, her eyes held no sparkle, no determination. Just lifelessness. Her work did not suffer of course, he thought she would rather die before that happened. But she held no passion for her work anymore, no empathy for the victims. They became nameless faces to her.

New case, new day, attempting to avoid Sara at every chance he got. He didn't know how else to function, what else to do. So he resorted to what had worked for him for so long, he retreated. It never ceased to amaze him however, how professional she remained. They were not best friends, sure, and the tension was palpable at times, but everything that was said remained in the confines of Sara's apartment, and he would not take that away from her.

He still wasn't really sure why he had decided to go to her apartment that night, a momentary lapse of concentration on his part, where he had decided that he needed to fix her pain. A night where he had decided he needed to know if she was getting any better, or simply slipping back into her safe routine. And everything had just gone wrong.

_A knock on the door had awoken Sara from her slumber on the couch. Rubbing her eyes, she thought the pizza that she had ordered an hour ago had maybe arrived. The knocking became insistent, _

"_Alright, Christ, you're the one that's late…" she responded whilst opening the door_

"_Oh," A moment lingered,_

"_Grissom, uh, sorry, you're not exactly what I was expecting" she self consciously closed her bath robe, chastising herself for not excusing herself to change. She shuffled from one foot to the other eyeing the man standing in front of her, she nodded her head_

"_Was there something in particular that you were after?"_

"_No…" she frowned._

"_Would you like to come in then?" she moved out of the way of the door to allow him entry into her home, he shuffled past her, brushing her arm on the way through_

"_I did have pizza coming, but apparently, Joey's pizza delivery is, uh, needs to be re-valuated" he moved around her house assessing something,_

"_What has you so intrigued?" he pointed around her home_

"_You moved your furniture around" she was taken aback that he had noticed_

"_Yeah, needed a change I guess…" he continued to move around her home, touching this, admiring that. She couldn't understand why he was at her home, nothing overly spectacular had happened at work, open and shut cases, she had spent most of the night catching up on paper work. Her mind was at a blank to understand why he…_

"_This needs water" _

"_What…sorry?"_

"_This plant, it needs water."_

"_Oh yeah, I water all my plants at night, so don't worry, it'll get watered. I'm not killing it" he released the plant's leaves from his grasp, moving to observe her CD collection. She continued to stand behind her arm chair, hands folded across her chest, as if Grissom was prying through her mind by poking through her house._

"_I love you"_

"_Excuse me?"_

"_I love you"_

_She pushed him, forcefully, _

"_Don't you dare say that"_

He closed his eyes at the memory, rubbing his temples. She had caused him some slip ups before, _honey, beauty, _but he had promised himself he would never tell her that. He wouldn't place that kind of a burden on her. But in her home, with his plant on her shelf, she in her bathrobe, with no makeup and skin aching to be touched and loved, he needed to try and give her that. He needed to give her what no one else had in her life, and he couldn't stop himself. God, all he had wanted to do was help her, and he had ended up making things so much worse for her than they had already been.

If he could get through his lifetime without ever having to hear that kind of pain in her voice, he would thank the heavens. She looked so utterly defeated; he couldn't stand to see her that way. This powerful woman, that inspired him, challenged him, looking so…crushed. She had to physically push him away, and it was tearing him up inside, he had done that to her, he had caused her to push him away. _'Congratulations Gil'_, he thought, _'you finally did it. You made her push you away; you made the one piece of beauty, innocence, one of the only people in the world that loves you, push you away.'_

Grissom sat in his office, in the dark confines of his torments. He couldn't rid himself of her. He watched her, swiftly moving down the hall, her head bowed, keys in hand, ready to return home, passing by everyone without a goodbye, or a wave, and he realised something. He realised what she had become, what he had helped her to be. Sara had turned into Grissom, she was him. Life, as it seemed, is not without its own sense of irony.

TBC

"Oh I am what I am, I'll do what I want. But I can't hide, I won't go, I won't sleep, I can't breathe. Until you're resting here with me. I won't leave, I can't hide. I cannot be, until you're resting here with me." Dido- Here With Me


End file.
